Part 3
“And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that He had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the Name of Jesus. And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem.”
They were under no obligations to receive him in Jerusalem on his own testimony. They could reject him and be justified in doing so. But dear old Barnabas, well known to them, takes Saul and brings him to the saints, and says, “Brethren, you don’t understand,” and then he told them how God had wondrously converted this man, and how he had been used of God in preaching the gospel around Damascus; then the brethren most happily received him. Paul, as he is now called, is getting some demonstrations of the practical working out of the unity of the Church of God.
In the next chapter we find a new epoch in the history of the Church. Up to this time we have had the Jews at Jerusalem, and the Samaritans who were a kind of hybrid Jew. These latter maintained the Jewish religion; they went by the Septuagint, the five books of Moses, and they were proud of it too. They were not Gentiles, but when we come to the next chapter, we find a man of the name of Cornelius living by the seaside in a town called Caesarea. God had been working in his soul. The Word of God calls him a “devout man”; he had not heard the gospel, but he longed to know more; and may I just make this remark in passing: there is never a hungering heart anywhere on the face of the earth—one who longs to know more of God—but what God is going to meet that soul. If there is any real soul hunger in your heart to know the truth of God, and to know more of the things of God, according to the mind of God, God knows the desire is there and He is going to see to it that it is met, and He will meet it abundantly. It matters not if it be a heathen Chinese on the continent of 500,000,000, if the heart yearns for the knowledge of the truth as to God and His claims, He will send someone there to meet it.
Here is a man; there is already a work begun in his soul, but he needs to know something yet. God tells him to send to Joppa and there he would find a man called Peter who would tell him what he wanted to know. Why did not God finish the work apart from any human instrument? Was He dependent upon Peter? Not at all. But this man was a Gentile, and up to this moment there was no Gentile in the Church of God; they had not come in thus far.
In the 16th of Matthew our Lord had given to Peter the administrative “keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Not one key; at least two, for it is, plural— “keys”; Perhaps he gave him three. He uses one in the second of the Acts when he points out to the Jews the way of salvation, and opens the door for them to come into the Church of God. In the 8th of the Acts Peter is one of those who laid his hands on the Samaritans, and they received the Holy Ghost. Now, he has use for the third key. He goes up to Caesarea, perhaps thirty miles from where he was staying at Joppa, and preaches the gospel there to Cornelius and those he had gathered into his house. When they hear the gospel from the lips of Peter, the whole company find themselves indwelt by the Spirit of God, and Peter, in response to that act, immediately orders them to be baptized, and they, too, are received into the fellowship of the body of Christ.
Now see what we have! We have Jews, Samaritans, Gentiles, all united in that body, and how careful the Spirit of God has been that it shall all be done in a consistent manner. If the Jews tried to raise objection to the Gentiles coming in, God had already seen to that. He knew that objection would arise, and when Peter is challenged as he returns to Jerusalem, as to having admitted the Gentiles into all the privileges of the house of God, he replies with dignity and fearlessness,
“This thing is of God, and beware, lest ye be found fighting against God. What could we do? God had received them; we must receive them.”
Peter’s testimony is accepted. Now the questions are all nicely adjusted, and you have the Church formed of Jews and Gentiles going on in unity here below! How wonderful! how blessed that is!
After we have the unity established, now the practical responsibility lies at the door of the saints to maintain that unity. It wasn’t left as a haphazard kind of affair—not just a free-for-all. There is divine order in maintaining that unity.
“And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the Spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John. And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Acquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace: for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ.”
There is a practical object lesson in maintaining the unity of the Spirit.
Here is a man mighty in the Scriptures; he is an eloquent, gifted man, but he couldn’t walk into a company of saints unknown, unannounced and just begin to minister on his own recommendation. He may be a great man, and he may be able to go to Achaia and tell those simple ones a lot of things, but before he goes he finds it necessary and orderly that he carry with him a commendation from the brethren where he was at Ephesus.
Why does the Spirit of God put these things in the Word? That we, upon whom the end of the ages are come, might learn from the Word what is the mind of God as to these practical questions. There is nothing too small for God to take note of that has to do with the welfare of the Church of God. It is very dear to His heart. As we learn more of the Church of God, its preciousness to Christ, we are learning that which will put us in tune with the mind of God.
Take another example in the 16th of Romans—a woman going from Cenchrea to Rome. It is a long journey so the apostle writes a letter for her:
“I commend unto you Phebe, our sister, which is a servant of the Church which is at Cenchrea: that ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you: for she hath been a succorer of many, and of myself also.”
She came from Cenchrea, going to Rome: the saints do not know her, so she goes in possession of a letter signed by the apostle and other brethren giving witness to her faithfulness, and her services in the Church of God. So as she came in among the saints at Rome, she not only came in, introduced as one entitled to fellowship among them, but as one valuable in the Church of God—helpful—a succorer of many, etc. That shows, does it not, how anxious the Spirit of God was that that unity He established should be thus maintained? So the need for letters of commendation.
That shows, does it not, that it was the custom at that time for believers passing from one assembly to another, to carry with them letters of commendation?
(To Be Continued)